Junior Member from IN

Senior Member

joined:May 26, 2000
posts:37301
votes: 0

Looks mike you need to request participation in this test - it's not just being dumped on the general public or even on a sub-group as a random test.

Sometimes the best answer to your question isn't available on the public web - it may be contained somewhere else, such as in your email... So we're developing a way to find this information for you that's useful and unobtrusive, and we'd love your feedback [productforums.google.com].

Starting today, we're opening up a limited trial where you can sign up [g.co] to get information from your Gmail right from the search box.

Senior Member

joined:Feb 12, 2006
posts:2679
votes: 105

i dont know why they do stuff like this. it may well be useful (and probably is, if you've got bazillions of emails), and im sure that the content of your emails is secure, but it's obviously just going to start people talking about privacy again. there's no good PR in it.

Junior Member from IN

Senior Member

joined:Feb 3, 2004
posts: 6124
votes: 18

i dont know why they do stuff like this. it may well be useful (and probably is, if you've got bazillions of emails), and im sure that the content of your emails is secure, but it's obviously just going to start people talking about privacy again. there's no good PR in it.

What concerns me is that G seems to be immune to bad PR. They get bad publicity, their search share rises and so does their stock!

Senior Member

joined:Mar 9, 2010
posts:1806
votes: 9

so get going guys...buy a huge list of gmail addresses and send a poster of your products to each of them. Make sure that you don't send too many to the same email address as you might run the risk of being spam trapped.Google is trying to give more life to email marketing.

Senior Member

Why the hell do I want to see my emails in search results? I do have a search within Gmail, isn't it? It is all a trap to keep people signed in, so they can spy them more.

Do you know why we see more of "(not provided)" in our keyword analytics tool? Google automatically checks the "Stay signed in" checkbox by default, on their Gmail sign in form. Even if you take care to uncheck it, and type a wrong password or username you will be presented with the sign in form that has the "Stay signed in" re-checked again.

Several ordinary users will never notice this and they always work signed into their google account letting the evil google to merrily track them.

Junior Member from IN

joined:Feb 24, 2011
posts: 83
votes: 0

Very well said indyank A bit of background. Google announced personalized search for everyone way back in 2009 [googleblog.blogspot.co.uk ]

And per this blog post & this update what we'll get... means in one hand Google says we're serving relevant, quality & trusty results & in other hand they're says you do personalize as per your requirement(now including e-mail's too)...! thoughts!

Senior Member

joined:Apr 14, 2010
posts:3173
votes: 0

My thoughts exactly. Google really is pushing to force people to use real names and be relaxed about sharing even their emails publicly yet their own CEO won't use G+. How long until the "optional" period ends do you reckon?

Senior Member from US

Preferred Member

joined:Feb 14, 2005
posts:475
votes: 0

I agree with all of you who've mentioned privacy concerns (tinfoil hat here?). I weaned myself off gmail for 99% of stuff (now domain-managed) and never stay logged on. But I agree with BeeDeeDubbleU: G's immune to bad PR, as few folks but techies with tinfoil hats will gripe. The standard argument back? "Don't like it? Don't use it."

Senior Member

I am pretty sure the emails will not be in the serps for general public only when your signed in G will the information in your email be displayed in your personalized search.

That is what they say and I also believe that you and only you will find your own emails in SERPs, when you are signed in.

But then I don't trust them any longer as they advertised Google+ feature of circles as something that offers more privacy (which Facebook doesn't do) and only people in your circles will find your posts. However, recently some people have reported seeing Google+ results in SERPs and these were of people not within their circles! Where did all those privacy promises disappear?

Senior Member from FR

joined:Feb 15, 2004
posts:6717
votes: 230

Probably for a lot longer than it's kept on the server, in fact.

G delete nothing, even when they say they have, they keep "finding" some data they forgot, or misplaced.. Gmail is for those who don't know how to run their own mail, are too lazy to run their own mail, who don't know how to kill/ avoid /speed read and recognise and delete spam, or who think that having more than 10 domains or a hundred email addresses makes all of that impossible to do them selves or too much hassle..

So they let it be "mined" by G and Y and MS etc..

Many and long were the debates here at the launch of Gmail where I and a handful of others said it will end in "mission creep", data made public and eventual tears..

Said the same about G+..

It is all coming to pass..

Social media and remote hosted email is not your friend, it is designed to gradually get you to tattoo the bar code on your neck yourself..( saving "the man" the trouble ) and to keep 99% of the sheeple smiling all the time, whilst marking themselves indelibly, and trackably, for the rest of their lives..

Senior Member from US

joined:Apr 9, 2011
posts:14435
votes: 576

Curious. I remember when gmail was a kind of elite. You couldn't just walk in off the street and get a gmail address; you had to be referred by an existing member. I think it was intended to be the opposite of, oh, let's pick a name utterly at random, AOL, which spoke loudly about spam and then let anyone get an address and instantly start sending out unlimited amounts of mail.

Apparently this changed when I wasn't looking. It may be time to make that last sentence into a macro.

Junior Member

joined:Aug 18, 2006
posts:103
votes: 0

Wow it's surprising what sometimes seems like a good idea to Google but something I assume most people just wouldn't want. I work online & sometimes might switch to a browser where I'm logged into my Gmail account. Showing someone something & having my personal emails come up is just not something I want. This will spur competitors.

Full Member

joined:June 4, 2008
posts: 202
votes: 0

I wonder if there will be an increase in spam sent to gmail accounts because of this? I could see spammers hoping to get a little more face time with their intended recipients by having their spam shows up in the user's SERPS.

Junior Member

joined:Apr 20, 2012
posts: 188
votes: 0

I dreamt about as a child growing up in India, glued to our black-and-white TV for every episode of Star Trek. I imagined a future where a starship computer would be able to answer any question I might ask, instantly.

Senior Member

joined:May 26, 2000
posts:37301
votes: 0

If you want to get an idea of the current trial program without testing it for yourself - Danny Sullivan published an article with screen shots. I really appreciate it, because this is one time I don't want to be a guinea pig.

Full Member

joined:June 4, 2008
posts: 202
votes: 0

spam filter is the best I've ever used.

Right, but spammers don't know what gets filtered and what doesn't. I'm wondering if the amount of spam they send specifically to gmail is going to increase (and possibly change to attempt to get around filters) in *hopes* that it doesn't get filtered and ends up in the inbox and ultimately the SERPS.

On the flip side, this could be an interesting opportunity for legit marketers to optimize their newsletters and such.

Although I still don't want my gmail messages showing up in the SERPS. If I want to search my email, I'll go directly to my email and do so. Just seems like an odd "feature" for Google to add.

I haven't heard one single person, industry or civilian, say they want this feature.

That doesn't really mean anything. Most things that we can't live without were once things nobody had asked for, because they didn't know to ask for them.

I'm not saying this is one of those things, but I will say this. More and more, I want and expect search to be integrated into more aspects of life and, for all our gripes about Google, they still do search very well. Often I find that when looking for something on Amazon, I have two tabs open, one using Amazon native search and one on Google using site:amazon.com. Same with many help sites - Drupal forums, Stack Exchange, whatever.

I hated gmail at first and tried to avoid it. I still tend to avoid a gmail address, but almost all of my someone@example.com addresses are actually using GMail as a client. Why? In addition to excellent spam filtering, I think ultimately Google-quality search, complete with synonym search, spell correction, language stemming and all the other things we now take for granted, just blows any other email search out of the water for me.

When interacting with a client, search is my main means of finding their emails and reviewing our conversations and Google does it well.

So now, to the question at hand... Like Ted, I'm not going to be a guinea pig here. Google does make me nervous and fearful. As I say, despite these fears, they have bought me off with an email product that works extremely well for the way I work. That said, I could see a day when I will find it frustrating that I have to actually go to GMail to retrieve a conversation. I can imagine that rather than loading my GMail, I'll be signed in and if a client calls, I'll just type a search into Google and retrieve both his public-facing information AND our private conversations.

I already have Rapportive in GMail, which sort of works the other way around - it finds his Twitter, Linked In and other info. This new feature brings that outside of GMail.

Am I scared by how much Google knows about me and my business? Yes. Does this really have much of an impact on that if I'm already a GMail user? I don't think so. Am I excited about using this feature? No, not at all... but someday I may see this as normal and expected.

Example: I thought the Chrome Unibar was the stupidest thing and I certainly didn't ask for it. After I used it for a while, though, I found it frustrating to have to decide which box to type in. I now find having an address bar and a search box a small usability obstacle, a tiny tiny inconvenience, but one that I notice when I'm on Chrome or IE.